In this episode, Miles O’Brien reflects on his journey to the Iberá Wetlands and El Impenetrable, both in northern Argentina.
Miles had the once-in-a-lifetime experience of touching a sedated jaguar during the filming of the television episode. Her name was Acaí, and she was part of Tomkins Conservation’s ongoing efforts to reintroduce jaguars to this area where they are locally extinct.
That local extinction is called extirpation, and the solution is rewilding. Miles explains what a trophic cascade is and how jaguars are essential to their ecosystems.
He dives into the rewilding efforts of South Africa, which set the standard for the work that Rewilding Argentina is doing now.
We look back at the factors that led to the jaguars’ decline in that region in the first place, which Miles points out are primarily of human-design. He underlines the urgent need for rewilding and preserving species that are under threat, pointing out that most effects of climate change can be reversed, but species extinction has much more finality.
Miles recommends that it’s better to “shoot pictures than shoot bullets.”
